The UK General Election

By Dark Politricks

Our beloved dear leader has just set the ball rolling for the media frenzy that the next month leading up to the general election will surely become. I wonder whether we will have any memorable moments like election campaigns of recent years such as My Blair being harangued by Grannies and Single Mothers or when Two Jags Prescott dished out two jabs to a passer by who had thrown an egg at him.

Labours campaign seems to be nothing more than “yes we have fucked the country up and loaded us up with insurmountable debt but do you really trust the Tories to do any better”. Seeing that the Tories themselves have rebranded themselves as the new caring sharing kind considerate conservatives as opposed to those posh public school boy snobs in the pockets of the fat cats in the city who thought nothing of putting whole swathes of the North of England onto the dole queue for a generation during the last recession, its a fair call to say we don’t actually know what this opposition are really capable of. The Lib Dems are really trying to capitalise on the recent expenses fiasco and drum home the fact that both Labour and Tory will make plenty of public platitudes about cleaning up the house and reforming the way business is done in the commons but behind closed doors they are doing all they can to keep business as usual. The Tories want to keep their big paying donors and Labour really need to keep the Unions money flowing in so any real attempt at party finance reform is going to be a hard challenge to mount.

However much I would like this election to be fought on things that matter to me such as personal liberties, Internet freedom and the phony war on terror that has led us into this high tech surveillance state that UK under Labour has become the election is going to be fought around the economy and nothing else will really get a look in.

Apart from arguing over which party will be more “financially responsible” and cut services that little bit more carefully or who will start cutting a few months sooner there is little difference between the parties. The Lib Dem’s realise they are in a potential king maker situation as recent polls still show a hung parliament as the most likely outcome and therefore they are trying their best to look like the responsible mature political party they believe the electorate is looking for rather than the Liberal party we used to know and love. This was a party that at their annual conference voted to make it official policy to legalize marijuana and end jail terms for possession of other drugs including coke and smack. That was a party I could respect but I don’t hear anything sensible coming out of Nick Cleggs mouth apart from wanting proper reform of government and a change in the voting system.

I was hoping to hear more about the freedom bill which was the one key item that people opposed to the wholesale destruction of centuries old freedoms and rights could back with pride. I am counting the days until I actually hear a front bench Lib Dem mention this bill on TV but I have a strong feeling that they will be too scared of the Daily Mail / Express brigade calling them soft on terrorism and the causes of terrorism to even mutter the words civil liberties in the next month. I hope I am wrong but it hasn’t happened yet.

So the next month is going to be speech after speech of politicians promising the earth knowing full well they only have a small pockets worth of soil left in the kitty to dish out anyway. All parties know we are in the shit and whoever gets in is going to have to either savagely cut spending or increase revenues through taxes or exponential growth.

If I was in power for one week only I would do the following:

Constitutional Reform

I would enshrine into law a new Bill of Rights that will encompass everything in the Human Rights act, the US and French constitution and more. All laws introduced by Labour and the previous Conservative governments that have removed liberties and introduced new powers to council busybodies to spy on the people will be repealed.

A new law will be introduced that states that any future government who tries to repeal or modify any right contained within this new document to the detriment of the people is to be considered a crime of treason punishable by our old punishment for traitors the hanging, drawing of the guts and the quartering of the body to the four corners of the land. There should be no higher crime than one that treats the people as nothing more than consumers, tax payers and subjects to the crown.

Talking of the crown the Royal family will become unroyal within my week of power and the constitution would be rewritten so that the crown becomes a figurehead in name only. I can think nothing worse than moving to a presidential style system as we will surely suffer years of being lorded over by ex prime ministers such as they do in other European countries. Do you want Blair back? No I didn’t think so.

The Queen is a good figurehead, she is a funny sarcastic old granny that keeps her mouth shut and her views to herself (unlike her son). What I cannot stand is the fact that purely through their birthright they are treated in law and in person above every other citizen of this country. I resent paying my tax so that they can move from palace to castle all year round. Yes they may bring the American tourists in but they can do that without all the special benefits and they have enough money in the bank to live their lifestyle without scarce tax money going to waste paying for their luxury.

The House of Lords would become political party free. Believe or not this house of old fogies actually does a good job in debating and amending government legislature and in fact on more than a few occasions they have been the only bastion of sense standing between a house full of people desperate to buy your vote and very bad law. Making this house electable would most likely just multiply by two the problems we already have in the commons. Having a life peerhood removes the requirement to have to pander to popularism and short term views. Removing political parties totally from this house would hopefully make this chamber even more able to debate on what’s best for the country rather than the party in question.

Political parties would be funded from the taxpayer and small donations only. Anyone could start a political party and the amount of funding they receive would be directly relational to the amount of seats they have. Lobbying would be a criminal offense on par with bribery (it usually is in all but name) and ex government ministers would be prevented from joining any company directly affected by legislation brought in under their time in power.

Term limits would be introduced to prevent jobs for life however as good moral upstanding politicians are a rare breed and the few we do have we don’t want to loose I propose a compromise. When a term has been reached in the MP’s constituency seat there is nothing stopping them from running again in another constituency as either an independant or for another party. This would prevent parties from just shuffling their players around the board and it would also hopefully enable those politicians of high calibre to stand for office on principle and their fellow man’s best interests freed from the constraints that party membership brings to honest votes of conscience.

The situation at home for the English is also unfair in terms of devolution for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but not England. The English deserve to be treated the same as our neighbours and we should have an English parliament. All members of regional parliaments would also be members of the national UK parliament which would meet at regular intervals to debate matters affecting the whole country.

The Economy

The economic state of our country isn’t too good to say the least. We need some sort of legal handcuffs to prevent any future government from breaking the bank in future. When the economic cycle is bringing in growth there should be a minimum amount of GDP that is put into savings so that when a recession comes we don’t have to borrow so much.

This fund could also be used for the national good and taxpayers could have each received a payout worth thousands when the recession hit which would have helped stimulate the economy without driving up national and personal debt. This fund would also be available for those who wish to retrain to join another profession as the courses currently offered to the unemployed are feeble excuses which are ignored by business and mean little to the student.

The big banks need to be split up like Vince Cable’s suggestion into high street lenders and casino type traders that would never ever be kept alive under any circumstances if another banking crisis were to occur. The banks we have taken over should be controlled more tightly so that lending to small businesses is resumed and we should keep our stake until the amount we as tax payers invested is paid off not once but twice over.

Why should we offload the stock as soon as possible just to keep up the premise that we actually live in a free market economy. We should make the banks pay us large percentages of their stupidly high yearly profits each year as punishment for wrecking the economy and only once our national debt is paid off and the coffers full again should we relinquish our stake.

I would save money by scrapping the National ID Scheme, Trident and any other huge computer project that is seen by the IT industry only as a way of milking ridiculous amounts of money from taxpayers. Let the IT students in their final year at college all band together and develop any new system required by the government. It will probably be built quicker and perform better and cost a few billion less than any existing contract we have with EDS.

I would bring billions of new tax revenue into the coffers by legalizing and regulating all drugs. We have a system at the moment where literally every month a new chemical compound is realised onto the market to bypass current restrictions and stay technically within the law only for it to raise a few stories in the press for being “linked” to some deaths and then get banned a month or two later. The current drug advisory board is loosing members faster than a hospice football team due to members quitting over government interference into their decisions. It’s clear the only people who think the current drug laws are working are Daily Mail readers and the politicians who are scared of them.

Drug addicts who commit acquisitional crime to pay for their habit will get a free prescription from their GP. Insurance premiums will be cut, burglaries and other theft related crimes will be cut in half. Drug dealers will go out of business and Police will be freed up to spend their time investigating proper crime which will not include road traffic offences! Addicts will be offered help along with their prescription and those convicted of a crime that would usually send them to our overcrowded prisons would instead go to special detox centers where they can be rehabilitated and then helped back into the workforce with the following idea.

I would set up a national company called UK LTD which would be a company of the people for the people. All taxpayers would be shareholders in this company and all profit available as dividends which will be paid out each year as a tax rebate. The company would engage in all forms of business and it would have first dibs at any tender put out by governmental departments, councils or any institution or educational facility that is funded through tax payers money.

The company would hire as its employees those people that find it hard to get employment elsewhere such as ex prisoners, long term unemployed, disabled, single parents, students etc. No longer will these groups of people be able to claim that they cannot get a job as this companies mandate would ensure these sections of the workforce get preferential hiring. As well as the ability to work on government contracts the company would be free to enter the market like any other company and there would be no rules limiting the type of business it engages in.

The primary motive behind this company is not to corner the market or nationalize business but to ensure there is always a job for the ex prisoner who won’t be given a chance by any other employer or to offer the unskilled worker who has been on benefits all their life a way into the job market.

If there is a choice between a pure free market which means, as it did in the 80’s when Maggie shut down the mines, that large swathes of the country don’t or cannot work and the huge costs associated with that. Such as social security and long term unemployment benefits, the social cost of deprivation and poverty, the high crime rates and the desperation and lack of hope this all brings to a community out of work. Or ensuring that there is work for as many people as possible even if that has to be subsidised in some sort of way then I choose the latter. When one adds up all the extra costs unrelated to the actual job per-se then it’s surely in the countries best interest to go down the second route.

The amount of business that is generated by government contracts is quite large so if we are choosing to have a large government we might as well as ensure as many people benefit from it in the most enterprising way possible. The employees become useful members of society, gain a trade and new skills which they can take on to future jobs and the government doesn’t waste immense amounts of money paying inflated prices to private firms who all know that at the moment a government contracts equals lots of profit for little cost.

Foreign Policy

Pull out of Afghanistan and pay the Opium farmers a fair wage to buy their product for use on the new regulated domestic market.

Don’t ever follow America blindly into wars of aggression ever again and any decision to go to war cannot be taken by the government alone without a vote. Those who have a desire for war will be offered the opportunity to experience it first hand by being allowed the honour of leading the troops in the first attack of any war they create. I always find that it’s people with little experience of real violence who are so desperate to wish it on others. If they are given the chance to see what real violence smells, sounds and looks like close up then maybe we would live in peace.

Our policy towards Israel and Palestine needs to be fair and balanced. We cannot support Israeli occupation of lands that are in breach of numerous UN resolutions and we should arrest any specified Israeli government ministers who enter our country and bring them to the Hauge for their war crimes committed in Gaza. Sanctions should be imposed on Israel until they lift the blockade on Gaza and we should pressure the USA as much as possible to stop them vetoing any UN resolution that is passed against Israel as its this behaviour by the bought and paid for Congress that has prevented any meaningful action from being taken to resolve this conflict.

The Falklands islands, although far away and a place we shouldn’t have even taken in the first place, are occupied by British peoples who claim our home as their home and have no wish to live under Argentinian rule. We should do all we can to prevent another senseless war from occurring over these South Atlantic rocks but if we are to keep an armed forces equipped and ready for battle at a moments notice then it should be for the defence of our people and not imperial wars of aggression in the search for natural resources.

The EU is one of the most undemocratic political entities ever created and the people of the UK have been denied a vote on our membership of it for too long. We voted in the 70’s to join a common market not a political entity but over time this is exactly what its become. I would offer the people a referendum that offered a the following choices:

carrying on as we are but with future votes on any major legislation.

leaving the EU altogether.

renegotiating a relationship on the same terms as Norway. Free trade, free movement but no political union.

Public Transport

The railways should be nationalised, fairs dropped by multitudes of 10 and investment into fast track railways extended quickly. It’s impossible to have proper competition on the railway system unless you could have multiple trains run by different companies running the same route at the same time. Only then could customers choose the fastest, cheapest and cleanest train to take to work. As this is not possible there is no point in keeping up the illusion of competition and we should take control of the whole system and run it in the public interest.

If the environment is such an important issue to politicians then instead of pricing drivers off the roads we should make the incentive to use public transport so tantalising that drivers flock in their thousands to sell their cars and buy yearly train tickets. However instead of trying to make train fares competitive our politicians believe that the only option is to make road use so prohibitivley expensive that it becomes cheap in comparison. We know this isn’t working as its currently cheaper to fly from Heathrow to Glasgow than get a train!

This one might sound a bit far fetched but it’s all technically possible. A large fleet of automated Johnny Cab type taxis should be implemented which would be shared amongst users. Many people currently buy cars and only drive to a few destinations such as work, school, shops etc. Because our current public transport system is so useless its impossible to get one bus or train from your house to your destination of choice. Therefore to reduce the number of cars on the road people would be encouraged to buy into a scheme where they can hire a Johnny Cab at their chosen time for a low public transport type price. Taxis are too expensive as they need to pay the drivers and owners wages. An automated vehicle using GPS and all the other wiz bang technology already used in Japan would be just the ideal replacement.

Instead of forking out thousands for a car, paying hundreds in road tax and fuel duty and having the cost of insurance just to spend 30 mins a day in the car, a hire on demand scheme would allow users the freedom of car travel at the cost of public transport and at the same time we would be helping the environment by reducing the number of cars on the road.

So there you go, a short list of the key policies I would implement if I had a week to rule the country. I have many more ideas up my sleeve but I don’t want to drown you all in detail just yet. I doubt I would do any worse as leader than Brown has over the last decade and I doubt whoever gets in next month will do any better and this is what scares me about our current political system

Tell me what you think of my policies and let me know how you intend to vote in May.